Society

We share a commitment to support the growing global trends for societal, ecological and economic change. We act as partners in co-creation and innovation.

There’s a race between the galloping complexity of societal challenges and the capacity of organisations and global systems to meet them with collaborative innovation. We thrive on working with people from around the world and across sectors – government, academic, corporate and NGO – who wish to break down the barriers, set aside personal agendas and collaborate to find fresh solutions to local and global challenges.

Drawing on our deep knowledge of social technologies for facilitating cross-sectoral change, we create learning journeys that result in deep mindset shifts, enabling people to ‘step beyond positions’ and form new strategic relationships that can transcend geography, background and expertise in the face of a common purpose.

We act as partners in co-creation and innovation. Our experienced facilitation allows not only for deep understanding and collaboration, but also fast-cycle prototyping and action. We draw on Theory-U from the work of The Presencing Institute, Art of Hosting, and People Centred Design.

We ensure that the skills, processes, and techniques are in place to continue any ongoing work through introducing self organising approaches from the outset, such as multi-sectoral communities of practice, knowledge networks, and innovation labs.

Systems thinking and managing complexity are at the heart of success in multi-stakeholder work. The value lies in bringing representatives of the system together for shared understanding and innovation.

Our work in the societal domain includes:

Leadership across boundaries

Through our work with HSBC on the Next Generation Development Programme, we have now facilitated week-long high-impact innovation processes encompassing 60 different projects with community-based organisations in Brazil, Mexico, India and Indonesia. But we see this as just the start. We believe that the true potential of this work is to develop leaders from multiple organisations and sectors who share a common societal concern. Using the field-challenge approach, they could not only make an immediate difference but achieve a rapid boost in their capacity to innovate and embed change in communities.

Social innovation processes

Beyond the event itself, we help to design and partner with convenors of multi-stakeholder processes on journeys to breakthrough, cross-sectoral innovation. We partnered with Anglo American, trade unions and governments on a global journey to innovate on mining safety.

Facilitation of multi-stakeholder events

Our rich experience as large-group facilitators within organisations and in cross-sectoral networks has been of service in areas as diverse as climate change, mining safety and the health sector. We bring an integral approach to the design and delivery processes, and use virtual technology in the lead-up and follow-through to deepen relationships and forward action. See our work with the first Climate & Development Knowledge Network Action Lab.